


A Lotta Gall

by gloss



Category: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Reference to Canonical Character Death, Self-Loathing, basically like canon, music scene gossip, with more m/m action
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 06:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17544575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Mike Timlin was the last man that Llewyn kissed because he wanted to.





	A Lotta Gall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marginalia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginalia/gifts).



> enormous thanks to GalacticProportions and orchis for audiencing and encouragement, and then all the more to orchis for an insta-beta.
> 
> happy birthday to marginalia ♥ maybe someday I'll manage to write Llewyn/CateBlanchett!Dylan but until then, hopefully barely disguised Frankie Lymon RPF is acceptable

_Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously_  
 _He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously_  
 _And when bringing [a] name up_  
 _He speaks of a farewell kiss to me_  
 _He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all_ (Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna", 1966)  
  
Mike Timlin was the last man that Llewyn kissed because he wanted to. After him, sure, there were a couple others, where kissing was part of what he'd been paid to do. Then a few more where he blinked awake from a blackout with stubble burn on his lips and indistinct memories of a bad party and cheap wine.

But Mike was the last one who counted. The only one, the thought of whom doesn't immediately stab Llewyn through with shame and sour, bubbling bile.

No, thoughts of Mike do much more violence, both in the moment and in regards to longterm accumulation. They probably always will. Like the faintly numb stiffness in his thumbs, like the knot at the back of his neck and its twin down on one hip, Llewyn expects he'll carry the shreds and shards that Mike left him with for the rest of his life.

Early spring, Llewyn is up in Rosendale, playing sessions for one of the hundreds of Cute Folky Kids groups that are springing up everywhere. Worms after a downpour, mushrooms in the sun, he doesn't fucking know what simile to use. They're everywhere, they're painfully young and fat-cheeked as literal babies, and he hates them. 

But they pay good.

Would he rather be anywhere else? Out in Laurel Canyon, say. Or half an hour up the road with Danko and Helm and the rest, even that rat fink poseur Zimmerman? Sure. Does he have the chops to keep up with them? Of course. 

None of that — neither talent nor ambition — matters. Never did, actually.

What matters is that this is a paying gig, meals included. The label's got them stowed in this shitbag motel, no interior corridors, just a ramshackle single-story monstrosity. Its rooms are strung out around the parking lot, everything open and willing and welcoming for the traffic off 32.

Llewyn's got no car, no reason to use the lot, so he's sitting out back. There was going to be a pool here, but it's overgrown now. No green yet; there's still frost in the mornings (his hands are stiffest then) coating last year's dead grasses.

Still, he's got a folding chair on a relatively level stretch of cement. Its seat and back are woven plaid nylon, nearly the same print and colors as a shirt he had back on MacDougal nearly ten years ago now. Then, it was "notable" and "eccentric" to dress like his own dad. Now, he'd just look like a narc. He already gets enough shit and suspicion thanks to the white in his beard and hair.

After lighting the next cigarette with it, he flips the ember off his butt into the dented ice bucket he's been using the last couple weeks as an ashtray. It's getting full. He should probably do something about that.

He slumps down in the chair, arms crossed, smoke wreathing around him. It's early yet — he doesn't sleep much these days — and he's smoking on an empty stomach.

"Those'll kill you," Teddy says from somewhere behind him.

"That's the idea," Llewyn says, sucking down another lungful. "Your clean living schtick, it's got to have some limits."

"Schtick, huh?" Teddy stops right behind Llewyn, his narrow shadow falling over Llewyn's lap, then drops down to a crouch next to the chair. "That what we're calling it?"

Cigarette gets bitten, tucked in the corner of his lips, so he can say, "Got a better idea?"

"Health regime," Teddy says, looking over at him. His eyes are heavy-lidded, like he's still half-asleep, and the thin material of his pajama top isn't going to do much for him, not in the chill of the morning. "New resolutions. Whole new start."

At that, Llewyn snorts, then coughs when the smoke goes down the wrong way. Clucking his tongue, Teddy rises and plucks the butt out of Llewyn's mouth. He drops it, grinds it out under the toe of his tennis shoe, then tucks his hip against Llewyn's shoulder. His fingers stray down the back of Llewyn's head, through his pillow-matted hair, across the nape of his neck.

Llewyn shivers. It's a cold morning.

They'd met once before, in Rikers, both in for vagrancy. Teddy was shaking through what Llewyn took to be DTs and only later figured for horse withdrawal. Little Teddy of the Teddy and the Bear Cubs, all grown up and not so famous, not any more. Even then, thinner than a ghost, Teddy was bright-eyed and _sweet_. 

Get him clean and healthy, and no one's going to be safe around him.

"Hungry?" he asks Llewyn now.

"Even if I say no, you're still gonna make me eat."

Teddy laughs, still, after everything, like a damn kid, loud and carefree.

He didn't remember their first meeting, even when Llewyn, for some reason, pressed him. That was back in the city, some party he crashed without quite knowing why. He hates parties even more than he hates people, but showing up where he's not wanted is more than a habit by now. More like a calling.

There was Teddy, scrubbed-clean, sharp lapels and sharper pointy shoes. Nice as anything, but he shook his head when Llewyn brought up Rikers. Why'd he care if some one-hit-boy-wonder remembered his sullen ass? But he did, he cared enough to shout and get thrown out of the shindig. Just like the old days! Nostalgia's the worst kind of bitch.

He cared because...he still doesn't know. Holding a man through withdrawal, though, that's like a foxhole, right? Surviving this fucking soulsucking "industry" and coming back for more: also notable. He cared because, left to his own devices, Llewyn's the only one who's ever going to remember himself, so he might as well make history count.

When Teddy turned up here ten days ago, freshly detox'd and smelling like White Rain and Burma-Shave and (goddamnit, Davis) _clean wind-whipped laundry_ , the first thing he did was apologize. Llewyn was putty in his hands.

Stiff, grainy putty, to be sure. But he had the time when the babies were doing photoshoots and trying on new clothes and getting hairdos. Besides, he couldn't get enough of Teddy's voice, never could. Soul and blues and whatever the hell else, electric and intense, was where it was at. So this project that Teddy says is going to save both their careers, who knows?

It could work. It probably won't. Llewyn's not one to say.

But Teddy kisses like he's never getting enough, holds on tight and opens up wider than the Hudson. He makes these sounds, doowop soprano delight vowels, when they move together in the dark motel room, bed squeaking, that Llewyn's memorizing and savoring and storing in amidst all the broken shit that makes up the rest of his so-called soul.

Of course, right now, Teddy's just standing close and twisting his fingers in Llewyn's hair and this is junior-high-level stupidity, with the frost burning off and some sleek dark animal moving through the overgrowth, but Llewyn's a beggar, and more, always will be. He'll take this.


End file.
